


Monster hunter

by Bitterblue



Category: Monster Blood Tattoo Series - D. M. Cornish, Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 11:05:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1776862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitterblue/pseuds/Bitterblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena as an apprentice teratologist, and Sarah as her prey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monster hunter

The sthenicon sits heavily against her hip, jostling with every step. She probably should have put it on ages ago, but Helena has never liked the feel of tendrils of  _other_  sliding into her nose, enhanced sensory experience or not, and without Master Tomas at her heels to mutter about paying for such an expensive device to go unused, she doesn't feel inclined at all to cover her face with the machine. Anyway, she can track just fine without it.

Whatever this nicker is that is trying to elude her is clever, she will grant. Master Tomas had told her he believed they were near the court of an urchin lord, that if she could get close enough to successfully get there and back again they could wipe that monstrous pit from existence, that then she would be  _good_  and he could perhaps let her have a day of rest. Helena would so much like to rest.

There is a movement to the left, Helena's leer eyes fixing upon it and tracking progress. She is stillness, caught in an unfortunate patch of sunlight in the mottled forest. The figure resolves into a girl her own age, she thinks, as she watches. Part of her thinks,  _but what age are we?_  and most of her remembers  _it doesn't matter, you're apprenticed until Master Tomas says you're not_. Hazy recollections of the foundlingry, of being chosen by Master Tomas to be his serving girl, of the first drops to transform her face stinging her eyes like tiny, liquid fires dance across her mind briefly before she remembers to forget. The girl is coming closer.

She has Helena's face.

The pair stare at each other for a length of time Helena could not begin to fathom, heads tilting identically. When the girl finally speaks, it is with Helena's voice, oddly accented. "So it  _is_  true."

Helena shivers at the words, shivers at this girl's face, shivers at her mirror image draped in the oddest clothes, feather-light recreations of normal dress that seem to be stitched out of sunlight and flower petals. Her fingers itch for the sthenicon, to sniff out the deception, but she leaves it at her side. The girl has her old eyes. She hadn't remembered to miss them.

"How did you find me?" the girl asks.

This, at least, she knows. "I tracked you."

"Why?" It is eerie, watching distrust flicker across her own face.

"I work as a leer for a teratologist. There is a...a...there are a lot of monsters nearby. I'm meant to find their lair, but I think I just found you."

The girl raises her eyebrows briefly, her face as neutral as she can manage otherwise. "You don't know? They never told you." She shakes her head. "They never told you you're one of us? The Duke of Sparrows told  _me_  they kept one and gave one to the everymen, since we looked so much alike and like  _them_. An experiment--"

She turns, and flees. It isn't dignified and it isn't right, but Helena is running at top speed back the way she came, back to Master Tomas, back to where she understands her world. Odd clothing. Her own face. The foundlingry. The scribbled note that is her only ideas of her origins. A dozen little things that never made sense, and above all of it her own voice speaking as if this is perfectly normal, perfectly acceptable to speak familiarly of monsters.  _One of us_.

Helena has felt a great many things, but never before had she considered monstrous.


End file.
